


how dare you love me like you've never known fear?

by nosecoffee



Category: The School for Good and Evil - Soman Chainani
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Never Going To Stop Talking About The Intricacies Of Tedros and Agatha's Relationship, Making Out, Missing Scenes, Pre TLEA, Some mature themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:14:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27364069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: (and you've got more troubles than minutes in the year)*“Do you hate it here?” He asks, softly.Agatha considers the question. Before, the answer would have beenno.How could she? This is her childhood home, the home of her mother, the house in which she’d once plotted her entire life. Now, though, it’s all changed. She wakes late at night and creeps quietly through the creaky house; she’s forbidden from going outside; her cat hates her; her mother is never home; and her True Love is wounded and depressed, cut off from his own home.“I don’t really know."(Missing scenes from the house on Graves Hill, pre-TLEA)
Relationships: Agatha/Tedros (The School for Good and Evil)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 55





	how dare you love me like you've never known fear?

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Home to Me" by Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (it makes me bawl my eyes out, please listen to it and you'll understand why)
> 
> Me: I should really be working on "was i most complete..."  
> Also me: *digs this out of the depths of my google docs archive* how about we edit the fuck out of this and post it???
> 
> So his is actually _based_ off a ficlet I wrote a few years ago, after my second read of TLEA. It was never published, and also way shorter, but thanks to the blessing of Google Docs never automatically deleting things I leave for literal years, this has made a comeback. I hope you like it :)

_a voice like your father’s tells you “nothing good’s for free…”_

  
  
  


The first few days, Tedros isn’t conscious very often. Makes sense, given the extent of his injury, but Agatha resents how long she’s left with only her thoughts for company. She keeps imagining there’s still blood under her fingernails, even when she knows she scrubbed them raw only a few hours ago. There’s no blood. There can’t be any. She cleans the wound every morning and every evening. It’s clean as can be.

When he’s awake, he’s irritable. He complains of the cramped quarters, the lack of light, the emphasis on being quiet, staying in the house. He hates her cat and her bed and whenever her mother is home they row like nothing else. She loves him, of course, but at this point she almost prefers him unconscious. At least then he doesn’t whine and scowl and mutter, he doesn’t swear and bat her away when she tries to fix his bandages. He doesn’t turn his nose up at the food she offers, he doesn’t look angry, he doesn’t avoid her eyes.

Agatha can watch him with his head in her lap, his hair twisted around her fingers, the crease in his brow all smoothed out. She knows Tedros hates being trapped here, unable to go anywhere or do anything for fear of tearing his stitches, but there’s nothing she can do. She can’t even make her finger glow when he annoys her enough to spark resentment in her belly, or when exhaustion blooms behind her eyes, or when he gives her that rare smile and love swells in her ribs, so full it almost hurts.

There’s a moment, on the third day, when she realises something is very wrong. They had done everything right, that first night when they carried him in from the graveyard; they cleaned the wound, stitched it up and bandaged it, despite his whimpers and yells after waking up five stitches in (Agatha had held him down with all of her strength and hushed him, aware of the danger that would come if anyone heard them), but even she knew she was being lax with his care of the wound. She let him roam the room, let him wrangle the bandage off when he found it irritating, left it to him to wash, claiming he was old enough to do it himself and he _doesn’t want her help, anyway—_

It had been a strange mixture of frustration and amusement that made Agatha stay her hand and let him do it. She realises it was a mistake when she wakes on the third morning, stripped of all sheets and finds him shivering in a cocoon, feverish and muttering incoherently. She unwraps him carefully and takes off the bandage, only to find, horrified, he’s not cared for it at all, and infection has set in. In Gavaldon, infection is a death sentence. Her mother could help, but her mother _isn’t here,_ so Agatha can only rely on the unreliable memories she has of her mother treating patients in similar situations.

She does everything she can think of, rubbing herbed antidotes into it as he bites down on a pillow, washing it, covering it with a poultice, washing his forehead of sweat and kissing it when he whimpers and cries during his fever dreams, because she doesn’t know how to comfort someone when they’re surely dying. When Callis finally arrives home, very late at night, nearing morning, Agatha screams at her.

 _“Where have you been? I need you!_ _He_ _needs you! Why weren’t you here? Why are you_ _never_ _here?”_

Her mother fixes him up, letting the fever run its course, face grim, mouth silent, the only exception being to ask Agatha to fetch things for her. Agatha weeps into his shoulder when the fever breaks, and strips the bed, washing the sheets dutifully in the bathtub as Tedros slumps on a blanket on the floor. Callis helps make the bed again, and settles Tedros back into it, and she’s gone when Agatha wakes again, slumped against her chest of drawers.

After that, Tedros lets her tend to him.

It shakes her to her core that they haven’t been able to have a normal relationship yet. If only they could meet on stable ground, if only the world wasn’t seemingly working against them. Every time Agatha thinks she’s got it all worked out another wedge gets shoved in between them. It’s not fair. She should get to have him and not have to fight for every minute she gets. She wonders, sometimes if he feels the same, or if he’s too busy being annoyed with everything to think of her kindly.

(She wonders if he _ever_ thinks of her kindly.)

It’s really difficult. Sometimes, usually late at night, Agatha wonders if he really, actually loves her, or if he was never actually taught how to say thank you when someone saves your life twice over, and he’s just stringing her along out of guilt. She hopes that’s not it. She hopes he’s kinder than that, smarter than that.

Tedros groans behind her and Agatha holds back a sigh, knowing whatever he’s annoyed by, she’s going to have to deal with it. “Yeah?” She whispers to the dark roof above them, waiting for him to begin a croaking tirade.

Nothing comes. Agatha turns her head to look at him. There are tears in his eyes. He’s watching the shadows on the ceiling too. They’ve become used to the dark. Her mother can’t afford candles anymore. Tedros gulps, trying to hold back a sob or something. Agatha watches him silently, not sure if she’s ever seen him cry before. She’s not good at comforting people — never has been, never had the need for it. Sophie was strong, and if she was going to break she did it on her own. She needed Agatha to see her best self.

“What is it?” Agatha asks him softly, turning over completely so she can lay her right hand on his arm, careful of the pressure she puts on him.

“I’m just so tired of this,” he whispers back, voice breaking a little. “It’s— it’s— I can’t keep doing this.”

“What?” She doesn’t know whether to be concerned or offended. He’s made it clear this living situation is not up to his standards, so she’s never sure if he’s insulting the house or the way their lives are working currently. “Waking up here?”

“Waking up here but not being able to do _anything_ about it,” Tedros clarifies, his throat bobbing as he swallows back tears. “I wish I still had the power to make all this right. But I can’t even move around without being in pain, much less make my _finger glow.”_

“It’ll come,” Agatha assures him, tiredly. “These things take time.”

He huffs, smacking his fist into the mattress between them. Agatha sees the signs. He’s gearing up for an argument. She doesn’t know that she has it in her. They’ve argued a lot since arriving here. At least at school it just felt like bickering, but now it feels like their relationship (or what’s left of it) hangs in the balance every time a harsh tone comes out. “How long have we been here?” He asks.

“A few weeks?”

“That’s _more_ than enough time,” he groans, covering his face with his hands. “I’ve got to have felt every emotion _possible_ since we got here — why hasn’t that been enough?”

She sighs, wondering what she can pilfer from her mother’s cart that will soother her oncoming headache.“You have to be patient.”

“Well, I’m _not_ patient,” he snaps.

Agatha sits up, hunched in on herself, feeling her own tears building and pushing them back. It’s fair, of course it is. He grew up in a castle. He grew up with magic and plenty of food and light, and water easily accessed for baths he could take himself. It’s not her fault he’s not satisfied here, but it also makes sense that her tiny, dark life here in Gavaldon would repel him. The bed is barely big enough for them to sleep in. Of course he hates it.

“Do you love me?” The question comes unbidden, she didn’t mean to say it, but it comes out all the same, all the bitterness and curiosity, the desperation for a resolute answer, the apprehension of knowing he can lie, knowing he has before, even though he swears he won’t.

 _“What?”_ Tedros asks, bewildered, sitting up beside her, shock in his eyes, hand already reaching out to touch her. She supposes he hadn’t expected her to jump so far into the argument, and is unprepared to answer the question.

“Do you love me,” Agatha repeats, nonetheless, shrugging his touch off. “I’ve been thinking about it, lately, and you know sometimes it would make sense if you didn’t. I’d understand.”

He looks appalled at this explanation. _“Of course_ I love you!”

“There’s no ‘of course’ about it,” she snaps, turning towards him, sheets twisting around her waist. His shirt has fallen open over his chest, revealing the lengths of bandages that cover his nearly mortal wound. “We _fought_ to have this, just us, and now that we have it all we do is bicker and mull in silence. It would make sense if you didn’t actually love me.”

His expression hardens, and he looks away, shooting back, “It’s not my fault you seem to think you’re unlovable.”

“Ha.” It stings. Of course it stings, but he’s well versed in verbal barbs. She knows he doesn’t mean that, he’s just aiming to shoot her down from her pedestal so they can get over this. But she’s not done. She has more to say. “I don’t think that. My mother loves me, so I _know_ I can be loved — I’m questioning whether _you_ love me. I’m wondering if you just felt one positive emotion towards a girl and went with it, called it love, because you didn’t know what else it could be.”

“Don’t be cruel,” he says to her, sounding defeated.

“Or what?” Agatha demands. _“What?_ What do you want me to say? What will you do if I _don’t_ stop? How far do I have to push you before you start hating me again? How close are you now? What are you going to do that you haven’t already done? Are you going to threaten me? Try to kill me again? I’ve tried to be comforting, lord knows I’ve been trying so hard, but all you’ve been is cruel. I’m just following your example. If this is love then I think I was right not to want it in the first place!”

“Agatha.”

They stare at each other in the dark, breathing heavily. Agatha shakes, slightly, as she fights off the painful wave of sadness that overtakes her. The lump in her throat aches. “What are we doing?” She whispers to him, unable to hold back the tears that gather in her eyes. “I barely know you. _I barely know you…”_

Agatha doesn’t stop him from taking her into his arms, but she’s careful of where she rests her head when he lays them down, all too aware of his healing sword wound. She cries quietly as Tedros holds her, present and warm and soothing. She doesn’t know if they’ve ever been this way, and it shakes her to her very core that they could be doing all of these important things out of order, the wrong way, or too quickly to look back on fondly later on.

“What do you want to know?” He whispers when her sobs subside and she’s lying with tears drying on her face, staring at the ripped wallpaper.

“Huh?” She whispers back, surprised he still wants to talk after all the barbs she’d hurled.

“What do you want to know?” Tedros repeats, just as slowly, just as meaningfully. He’s found some semblance of calm during Agatha’s destructive storm, the two sides to a coin, the ever-changing and ever-shifting balance. “I’ll tell you everything; my favourite food, the colour of my bedsheets, back home, my least favourite servants. I’ll tell you everything because I love you. And then, when I’m done—“

“Sounds like it’ll take a while—“ she laughs wryly, leaning into the kiss he presses to her oily hair.

“When I’m _done,”_ he repeats, louder but still kind, “you can tell me everything about _you._ You’ll be a connoisseur of Tedros facts and I’ll be a connoisseur of Agatha facts.”

Agatha traces pattern on his shoulder with her pointer finger and informs him, “That title’s been taken by at _least_ two people, already.”

“I’ll be the third, then,” he amends. Agatha hums her doubt. _“Maybe._ But in the end, all that matters is I love you, and I want to know things about you.”

  
  


_well, that may be_

  
  


To his credit, he really tries. Agatha sees that. He tries not to complain as much, eats what she gives him, lets her clean his wound without arguing that he could do it better (he can’t).

It’s early morning when he stirs again. Agatha went out to the water pump by herself only an hour before and managed to warm enough of the water for a passable bath. She put up the old wooden partition to give herself some semblance of privacy, given the house is two rooms and one of them is Callis’ mostly unused bedroom, and everything, including Agatha’s bed, is in the other. She’s been there for maybe twenty minutes when she hears movement from the bed.

The frame creaks, the sheets move, his breath huffs out in annoyance. Then the floorboards under his feet, his hand catching his weight against the wall as he struggles to his feet and shuffles over, eyes peeking through the delicate details at the top of the partition. “Are you asleep?” Tedros whispers.

Agatha shakes her head, and laughs, quietly. “No.” She gestures him over, arm dripping.

Tedros rounds the partition and sits down beside the bath on the little step stool. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she responds, wondering why all of a sudden he’s so chipper. “What time is it?”

“Five, I think?” He responds as she reaches up and sifts his hair from his eyes with her wet fingers.

“Hmm, you’re early,” Agatha comments, quietly, secretly quite pleased with how he leans into her hand. “You’re usually still asleep now.”

“Got me on a schedule?” Tedros asks, frowning and hooking his elbow over the lip of the tub.

 _“You’ve_ got you on a schedule,” she corrects him, “I just picked up on it.”

Her hand moves further into his hair, towards the crown of his head, and Tedros rests his cheek against his elbow. “Do you hate it here?” He asks, softly.

Agatha considers the question. Before, the answer would have been _no._ How could she? This is her childhood home, the home of her mother, the house in which she’d once plotted her entire life. Now, though, it’s all changed. She wakes late at night and creeps quietly through the creaky house; she’s forbidden from going outside; her cat hates her; her mother is never home; and her True Love is wounded and depressed, cut off from his own home.

“I don’t really know,” she responds. “I suppose I should. It would make sense if I did.”

“But you don’t,” Tedros finishes for her, voice calm as opposed to his earlier accusations that she was trapping him.

“It’s not the worst. And I have _you_ with me. It would be worse if I was alone.” Reaper hisses from the bed, where he’s curled up on her pillow. _“Almost_ alone. It would be worse if I was without you.”

“But all I do is complain,” he protests, lightly, as if he believes her, but has no idea why she’d put up with him. If Agatha’s honest, she doesn’t even know. “I’m wounded and grouchy, and all I do is gripe about everything.”

“You do a fair bit of griping, don’t you,” she hums, pressing kisses to his hair. She hasn’t felt like this with him in...well, probably ever. In the whole time they’ve been together (and apart, but still longing for each other) they’ve never had the chance to just be them — no expectations, no looming danger, no grades and classes. It’s just them, in this house, and for the first time since they arrived, that doesn’t scare her or annoy her. It’s nice, almost domestic if she thinks about it too hard. It would be better if they didn’t have to live under her mother’s absent rule, if they were allowed to leave the house, if they could be together but out in the open, but right now it doesn’t feel bad. “Good of you to acknowledge it though.”

“Oh yes?” Tedros asks, somewhat cheekily, obviously expecting something. He’s still lying with his cheek on his arm, she’s still wrapping ringlets around her knuckles, forging a line across his scalp with the tip of her nose, but it’s quite a content picture, the only sounds the candles hissing, their breathing, and the water rippling as she moves, softly.

“Yes.” Agatha agrees.

“I’d hate to be without you too,” he confesses, his content tone faltering a little. “I always have. Those last few months at the school were—“

“I’m sorry,” she interrupts, overcome with the sudden urge to atone for the mistakes she made at the School for Girls. She pulls away so she can look at him in the face, assessing his features, cupping his cheeks in her hands. “I know I’ve said it before.”

“You shouldn’t apologise. You did everything right,” Tedros dismisses, holding her wrists, gently, loosely, and then leaning forward, his hands running up her arms and shoulders until he’s mirroring her. “It was my pride, my ego that got in the way. I got paranoid, I was swayed easily. _Too_ easily. I’ve done so many things I regret—“

She presses her forehead to his, willing him to calm as she recites, “If you managed to get through your life without regretting something, I’m not sure that’s much of a life.”

It’s too eloquent, too well-formed to be anything but verbatim, even Agatha sees that, so she understands when he cocks his head and asks, “What’s that from?”

 _“Robin Hood.”_ Tedros kisses her, his hand on the side of her neck, thumb by the corner of her jaw, and Agatha kisses him back, deeply, her hands still in his hair.

“Rely on you to go quoting storybooks to me,” Tedros mumbles, and then kisses her again, pulling away just to tease her, “Never letting me forget you’re from a different world than me.”

“You only learned that story through books too,” Agatha protests, laughing as he kisses her ticklish neck, her ragged nails running up the back of his neck until they dig into his scalp. “I’ll be calling _you_ Reader one of these days. We’re not so different, really.”

He releases her and then chucks off his shirt, hitching his leg over the lip of the tub, obviously intent on climbing in with her, but Agatha stops him with a hand to his chest. “Not big enough for the both of us.”

“Nothing in this damned house is.” Tedros mutters, hands falling instead to her waist, the worn and sodden linen of her slip sliding against his calloused hands.

“And the water is already cold,” Agatha adds. She wraps her arms around his neck and presses their foreheads together, allowing him to pull her upright by her waist, rivulets of water running down her back. “Come on, take me to bed and kiss me properly.”

Tedros kisses her, again, like he can’t help himself, and smiles when she noses him away. “Spoken like a true queen.”

He hoists her up, hands on the backs of her thighs under her soaked slip, and Agatha instinctively wraps her legs around his waist, kissing his cheekbones and whatever other parts of his face she can reach while he stumbles towards the unmade bed.

Reaper yowls and runs away hissing when Tedros trips and falls onto the bed, thankfully landing on his back so Agatha is only jostled a little. She manages to bite his lip hard enough to draw a little blood, but he really doesn’t seem to notice (or care), because he just keeps kissing her, hands running up and down her sopping wet back. His bandage is a little askew, but it’s been nearly a month, and he doesn’t even complain of the stitches aching anymore, so Agatha can’t bring herself to care about it as she leans over him, her hair in her eyes.

She’d once wondered what was so enticing about kissing, once even voiced the question to Sophie, who had snorted in response, giving her the sardonic response of _you’ll understand when you’re older._ Agatha supposes she was right, in a way, only that Agatha can’t think of a single other person she would ever willingly kiss. Tedros is her true love (and Sophie had been a grief-stricken one time thing), and she does not want to stop kissing him, even though she’s tired from staying up all night for her mother to get home and her mouth feels like it’s going numb, and her torso shivers from wearing a wet slip in a cold room, and her legs feel like jelly from straddling his hips—

Tedros rolls them over, obviously noticing her distraction, her flagging interest and her fatigue. “Something wrong?” He asks as he trails wet kisses down her pale neck. “Am I _boring_ you?”

Agatha crosses her ankles across the small of his back once more, hands in his hair for balance and a point of focus as his kisses trail further down. She considers being honest, encouraging even, given that he’s sucking at her pulse point, like an orally fixated vampire who has no interest in blood. She considers saying something breathy and soft like, _how could you ever bore me?_ But that’s not Agatha, no, she’s soft but not like that. Instead, she yanks on his hair, eliciting a gasp from him that puffs against the hollow of her throat, and says, “Sorry, forgot you were there for a second.”

Tedros glares, good-naturedly at her, and kisses the underside of her jaw once more, his nose tickling the bottom of her ear as he gathers her hips into his hands, pushing her further up the bed as she wriggles and laughs at his attentions. Once leaning up against the pillows, he pulls back and presses the tips of their noses together, forcing Agatha to cross her eyes to get a good look at him in the dim candle light of the room, the barest trace of sunlight peeking through the tightly drawn curtains. He’s a little golden like this, Camelot’s prince. And he loves her.

Agatha can see that clearly, as he brushes his swollen lips just barely over her own. He certainly loves her, even if he never really knows how to tell her. He loves her, yes, certainly, obviously, and she loves him too, to her sudden bashfulness and her acceptance. She never lets anyone get near to her, but he wriggled his way in, he followed her around and nagged her until she had no choice but to love him. Tedros loves her, how else could he be holding her like this as she shivers in her drenched slip? How else could he be brushing her damp hair behind her ear to get a better look at her as he draws back a little, taking her in in the slightest shine of morning light?

She’s never let anyone touch her like this before, look at her so openly and lovingly, and he’s being so careful with her, so gentle and caring.

Agatha has the inkling in the back of her mind, the knock of a long forgotten thought screaming to be heard, that she’s missing something, but can’t bring herself to care, not as he kisses her again, tugging her close, close enough to taste his teeth, close enough for their chests to press together and their arms to tangle, her knees squeezing his hips so tightly it must hurt. She can’t care about anything but Tedros, her prince, her True Love, pressing her down into the pillows, his hands running up and down her sides, slowly gathering the soft material of her slip up her hips.

Her mother’s bedroom door creaks open, and the floorboards to their right groan in protest and Agatha throws Tedros off of her with only adrenaline adding to her strength. He goes to protest, but Agatha throws a blanket over his pink and panting form, picking up a ragged book from the floor just as her mother waddles out into the house proper. She gives Agatha an odd glance, surveying her and the lump under the blanket that is Tedros, annoyed to have been interrupted and all riled up for that matter. She takes in Agatha panting and pink faced, lips swollen and dripping wet from her bath, slip pushed scandalously high up her thighs and rolls her tired eyes.

“No funny business, you hear, boy?” She barks and Tedros pokes his head out from under the blanket, nodding his hasty agreement. Agatha bites back a laugh, and her mother looks at her again. “That goes for you too, young lady. I’ll not be a grandmother before you’re married, understand?”

Agatha goes bright red and nods, eyes downcast.

Her mother continues into the kitchen, pushing aside the blanket they’re strung up between her bed and the kitchen for privacy, muttering about _bloody teenagers_ and _can’t keep it in their pants for the life of them._

Agatha giggles at how normal it feels, the giggles only growing in size and volume when she sees Tedros’ put out look, obviously pissed to have been interrupted. “Oh come on,” she gasps through her bouts of laughter, nudging him with her foot. “It’s funny!”

“It’s _not_ funny,” Tedros mutters, crossing his arms under his chin and putting on the blackest expression he can manage. “You’re mother walked in on me _ravishing_ you.”  
  
“Oh please, _that’s_ what you call _ravishing?”_ Agatha snorts, far too loudly to be polite, but far too amused to be quieter. “I could give you a run for your money.”  
  
“Shut up!” Callis yells, sounding half-panicked at having overhead their banter. “I don’t want to hear about _any_ ravishing!”

This time, Tedros laughs too. It’s nice, if a little weird. For the first time in a long time, nothing feels bad. The weight on her heart lifts for a moment. Everything’s okay, so long as she has the both of them.

  
  


_but you’re walking home to me_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this. If you liked it, please leave a comment, I love hearing people's thoughts on my writing. Hmu on Tumblr @nose-coffee for notifications when I post fic and funny memes. Next chapter for "was i most complete..." will be out on Tuesday the ninth (AEST), so keep your eyes peeled (I might actually post it Monday night bc I'm impatient but uhhhh) bc this chapter's gonna be a doozy!!
> 
> In any case, thanks once again for reading, I really hope you enjpyed it :))


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